Team Mouse!

Well, today was the day the mouse traps in our attic were scheduled to be inspected by The Man From the Council – or The Mouse Man, as he shall henceforth be known. Or maybe The Evil Mouse Killing Man, Enemy of Mice All Over the Land? Maybe that would be better?

From this you will gather than I am rooting for the mice here. Mice, I am ON YOUR SIDE! I’m having the ‘Team Mouse!’ t-shirts printed up as we speak. On Saturday morning, as I lay drifting in and out of sleep, I heard the little critters resume their scratching above my head. It was horrible. They were up there, happily eating my clothes, and not realising they were but moments from certain death! How could I lie there and do nothing, while all mousekind was at risk? How will I look Mickey in the eye next time I go to the Magic Kingdom, HOW?

Well, readers, I did nothing. But only because Terry was there at the time, and Terry is firmly on Team Man-From-the-Council. But I felt bad about those mice. And I still feel bad about them, even although….

*drumroll*

…THEY MAY NOT ACTUALLY BE MICE!

“Hmm,” said the man from the council, scratching his head after his inspection of our attic. (At least, I’d imagine he was scratching his head. I don’t actually KNOW this for sure, on account of how I was still in my dressing gown when he arrived, and was listening to this conversation from the office, with my ear pressed against the door, and a hysterical Rubinman in my arms. Rubin hates the Mouse Man. I think it’s safe to say that he is also on Team Mouse.) “It’s strange,” said Mouse Man. “There are mouse droppings up there… but there are no mice in the traps. Which is unusual. We would normally expect to have a few of them by now. And the funny thing is…”

I pressed my ear even closer to the door. There was a FUNNY thing about the mice in the attic? Awesome!

“The funny thing is, whatever it is up there…”

WAIT! “Whatever it is up there“? We’re dealing with a “Whatever” now, rather than a mouse? GOD.

“…has eaten a hole in the top of one of the traps, but hasn’t taken the bait. We’d normally associate that with a much bigger animal.”

“There’s definitely SOMETHING up there,” concluded Mouse Man cheerfully. “We just need to find out what it is!” And with that he headed off to murder mice somewhere else.

So. As I see it, there are a couple of options:

1. It’s a huge, mutant mouse, which is too big to get into the trap. Good for it. You go, Mutant Mouseman!

2. There are ordinary mice up there. But there is ALSO some kind of other, dastardly creature which eats mice for breakfast. Not so keen on this option, actually.

3. Yeah, it’s NIGEL. And his months, nay, years, of living on the run have made him feral, so not only is he eating my clothes, he’s ALSO eating my mice. And when he finally tires of that – or eats all the mice in all the world – he will descend… and EAT OUR BRAINS.

Well, I was trying really hard to convince my new colleagues I was sane, but after snorting hysteically more than once at this I guess that's out the window… It lasted a month, which was nice.

Personally I like the idea of mutant mice – as in, really clever ones who know to avoid the traps. Have you seen the episode of House with the mouse called Steve McQueen? He's clever when it comes to traps… but then I think he has some sort of brain tumour… I know it didn't end well either way.

THAT's what you need – Greg House to come catch your mouse and take him away in a cage to keep as a pet!
.-= Caroline´s last blog ..Feverish Dreams =-.

Steve McQueen survived that episode, as his condition was treatable with antibiotics, but it's possible he died later in that series when he was used as a guinea-pig to find out what was killing Foreman. His eventual fate was never revealed to us…

I'm embarrased to admit I've never seen House, although it sounds like my kinda thing! I do like the sound of a mouse called Steve McQueen, though (totally just typed 'Alexander McQueen' there – too much fashion blogging!)!

Oh, and P.S. my Gran once had frogs in her attic. The exterminator-type-man told her it's not unusual for large birds like crows to take live baby animals to the roof tops to feed, then drop them bu accident… They were apparently particularly noisy guests…
.-= Caroline´s last blog ..Feverish Dreams =-.

Hehehe this had me laughing out loud, but luckily for me my colleagues have already realised I am bonkers and just ignored me! I still stand by my original suggestion that it is Nigel, all the evidence seems to be stacking up that way.

Maybe you ought to change his name to International Mouse-Eating Man Of Mystery?
.-= Lauren Cooke´s last blog ..Inspiration – Low Fashion =-.

Many years ago I had a mouse problem (mouse singular; it was only one mouse). The mouse would scurry about my apartment every morning at about 7am and it freaked me out. But like you, I felt terrible about killing it. So I bought one of those "have-a-heart" traps that traps the mouse but doesn't kill it. The morning after I set it I heard a "clunk." The critter was caught. I saw its little nose peeping though the small holes on the trap. It looked really cute. So I walked to a nearby large park (Golden Gate Park, which is gigantic by urban standards) and released it. I felt really good about myself until I read that this was totally inhumane. Apparently when mice are introduced to new environments, they don't know how to find food and frequently starve to death. I imagine that mouse being perfectly at home in my woodframe apartment building and then suddenly finding itself in a jungle.

This is exactly why our council don't use the humane traps: the guy said they often just mean that the mouse takes longer to die, either because the homeowner forgets to check the trap often enough, or because the mouse is released into an environment it can't survive in. It feels so awful to just kill it, though – I wish it/they had found somewhere else to live, I mean, there's a whole empty house next door they could be making their own!

I just let the mice out back into the garden. (That's where their family live.) Since sitting in a trap is quite boring I tend to hope they learn that entering my flat isn't a good idea – a bit like the way polar bear jails are supposed to work.

Ask your team mouse man if it could be a weasel. That's what I think we have. The cats got one after a huge kerfuffle, but it clearly has friends.
.-= david´s last blog ..Virgin Trains -Try Turning them Off and Restarting Again. =-.